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Lessons from a one-line press release

A few months back, the popular rock band Stone Temple Pilots made a major splash in the news when it announced it was firing lead singer Scott Weiland. The group announced the shocking news in a one-sentence press release that read:

“Stone Temple Pilots have announced they have officially terminated Scott Weiland.”

Now, we’ve debated the topic of press release length on my blog, and though I’ve always believed that short and sweet press releases work best, I’ve never tried to argue that press releases should be just one sentence long.

But the truth is that this single-sentence press release was incredibly powerful, and there are a few valuable lessons we all can learn from it.

Leave reporters wanting more. The point of a press release is to get reporters interested in your story. You want your press release to pique their interest so they contact you to learn more about your story. That means you don’t need to include every detail of your story in your press release. You want to include just enough to give them the main story while leaving them asking for more.

Stone Temple Pilots certainly left reporters and fans wanting more. Everyone was speculating about why the band had fired the lead singer, what it meant for their future, and a host of other questions. How many reporters do you think have tried to reach out to the band since this press release was issued? I’d say quite a lot.
Timing is everything. This press release, issued on a Wednesday morning, was perfectly timed in two ways. Issuing it in the morning gave people all day to talk about the story, and releasing it mid-week helped ensure it would have a few days of life before the weekend arrived.

Another interesting thing to note is that this story was announced just as Weiland was preparing to head out on a solo tour. Think this is getting fans interested and driving ticket sales? You bet it is, and though that might just be a coincidence (conspiracy theorists would say otherwise), the timing certainly couldn’t have been better.
Your news should get people talking. Even though you might never have news that gets as much attention as the recent Stone Temple Pilots announcement, the idea is that you should always strive to issue stories that get tongues wagging. If no one outside your company cares about your story, you probably don’t need to issue a press release about it. What lessons have you learned from this one-sentence press release?